Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Well, it looks like there'll be plenty of opportunity for political attacks related to the hurricane. I think that, just as was the case with the 9/11 investigation, many of the actual facts will be glossed over and the MSM will play up only aspects which damage Bush (consistent with the coverage for the past week).

Let's just hope that Mayor (and Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferer) Nagin isn't invited to be a member of the investigatory panel. However, given the inclusion of Jamie Gorelick on the 9/11 panel, I don't have much confidence in this...

President Bush and Congress pledged separate investigations into the widely panned federal response to Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday as Senate Democrats said the government's share of relief and recovery may top $150 billion.

"Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people," Bush said after meeting at the White House with his Cabinet on storm recovery efforts.

"Governments at all levels failed," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said at the Capitol. She announced that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee would hold hearings, adding, "It is difficult to understand the lack of preparedness and the ineffective initial response to a disaster that had been predicted for years, and for which specific, dire warnings had been given for days."

Stung by criticism, Bush called congressional leaders to the White House for a meeting, their first since the hurricane spread death and destruction on a fearsome scope along the Gulf Coast and left much of New Orleans under several feet of floodwaters.

Congress formally returned from a five-week summer break during the day, signaling that the hurricane would take top billing on the agenda in the coming weeks.

I think that any investigation will find fault at all levels of the bureaucracy. However, if it's an honest inquiry, I have a feeling that Mayor Nagin and Blanco will bear the brunt of criticism, given recent news that

Blanco needed 24 hours to decide whether to allow the President to declare that LA was in a state of emergency

Nagin's police force disintegrated within hours of the hurricane and turned into looters themselves

Nagin's inability to implement the local emergency plan that called for evacuation of the civilians.